Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL Read online

  * * *

  WARRIOR

  SOUL

  The Memoir of a Navy SEAL

  CHUCK PFARRER

  Random House | New York

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Half Title Page

  Author’s Note

  BOOK ONE / JOINING THE CIRCUS

  Goodbye to All That

  Charm School

  Operator 156

  Mobile, Flexile, and Hostile

  Operations Other Than War

  Surfin’ Safari

  BOOK TWO / PEACEKEEPER

  The ’Root

  That Old-Time Religion

  Hauling the Mail

  Losing the Bubble

  Bloody Sunday

  Letting Go

  Home Again

  BOOK THREE / A RAKE’S PROGRESS

  Some Time in the Sun

  A Sea Cruise

  Sharp-Dressed Men

  Becoming a Jedi

  High Speed, Low Drag

  Full Mission Profile

  Adventures in Antiterrorism

  Wandering

  Farewell to Arms

  Glossary of SEAL Terms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  * * *

  For my wife,

  who is teaching me how to love,

  and for Paddy,

  who is teaching me how to live

  * * *

  People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because

  rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

  —GEORGE ORWELL

  * * *

  WARRIOR

  SOUL

  * * *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  AS A NAVY SEAL, I was trained to notice little things: a blade of grass bent by the side of a trail, the small shadow cast by a trip wire. I was taught to plan methodically, to attack where I was not expected, and to vanish when the enemy attempted to strike back. These skills kept me alive through seven months of combat on the streets of Beirut, and during more than two hundred classified operations in every climate and ocean around the world.

  The “SEAL” in SEAL Team stands for the elements in which we are trained to operate: sea, air, and land. Naval special warfare is the smallest and most elite special operations force in the United States military. Although the exact number of SEALs operational at any one time is classified, I can say that our organization is considerably smaller than Hells Angels.

  Team members refer to themselves not as SEALs but as Frogs, Team guys, or shooters. Within this society, a man’s reputation is earned solely by his standing as an operator. A SEAL is judged not only by the missions he has undertaken but by the manner in which he conducts himself, his courage, operational skill, physical ability, and character.

  Since the first navy frogmen crawled onto the beaches of Normandy, no SEAL has ever surrendered. No SEAL has ever been captured, and not one teammate or body has ever been left in the field. This legacy of valor is unmatched in modern warfare. In Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Somalia, Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan, SEALs appeared where no enemy thought possible and struck with a ferocity far out of proportion to their number.

  My proper share of this glory is a small one. Because of a few twists of fate, some luck—good and bad—and the courage and honor of my teammates, I am on hand to tell this story.

  The exceptional among our number we count as heroes. My service, though varied and geographically diverse, was workmanlike. I was in combat. More than some, and less than others. I served as a military adviser in Central America. I conducted reconnaissance and denied area operations in places the United States and Americans were not thought to be. I served as an assault element commander in a top-secret “black” counterterrorism outfit. I was in the game, and I was an operator.

  It is the failing of a first-person narrative that the spotlight will fall disproportionately on the writer. This is unfair both to the whole story and to my teammates. Sometimes I was a leader, and sometimes I was led; my point of view was never impartial, and many times it did not extend beyond my own small operational circle. What you will read is what I remember, what I saw, and what I felt.

  There are many operations that I am not presently at liberty to write about. I will leave those stories for another time, or for some other SEAL to describe. I have omitted the specific details of some operations, leaving out tricks and techniques that would contribute to the tactical education of our enemies. Likewise, I have obscured the location of some of the adventures I describe, as it might be necessary for some other SEAL, on some future moonless night, to revisit the scene of the crime.

  Since the time of my service, a few of the men who worked with me have become public figures: I have made use of their real names. I have kept the secrecy of others, and in all cases I have changed the names of my operational teammates. I have tried to draw the characters as accurately as possible, flattering or not. To teammates who see themselves portrayed badly (not unflatteringly but badly), I apologize. And to friends who do not find themselves in these pages, again I ask forgiveness. They will know that in writing this book some accommodations were made, not only with certain facts, but with dates and participants. The operators I left in shadow have my complete respect and profound gratitude.

  I have also changed the names of the women in my story. That might be just as well; I cannot say that I have always been fondly remembered, and what I am able to write would not paint an adequate picture of their beauty, kindness, or patience. I have tried to be honest about my faults, which are many. It is not my intention to drag up old hurts or to surprise with unknown offenses. I did not always love well, and that was the greatest failing of all.

  You know you’ve made it in the SEAL community when you attend a reunion and someone comes up, shakes your hand, and says, “I thought you were dead.” It’s time to retire when you answer, “I thought I was too.”

  I left when I felt I had used up all of my luck. I flatter myself to think that I got out before I had lost my courage. If you stay in the Teams long enough, complacency, accident, or the enemy will eventually take you. I’ve seen it happen to operators braver and more accomplished than I am; sooner or later, it would have happened to me.

  SEALs are not often mentioned in dispatches, nor are their operations frequently revealed in the press. It is more common that our missions, highly classified, are not disclosed for years. Even within the community, there are operations only whispered about. The actors in them are sworn to secrecy by duty, honor, and an oath.

  In the SEALs, the reward is simply knowing that the job was done. The prize is the quiet pride felt for an operation that remains unknown to the American public and continues to be a distressing nightmare to the enemy.

  If operators who were there read this book and then say, “That’s the way it was”—that is enough.

  * * *

  BOOK ONE

  JOINING

  THE

  CIRCUS

  * * *

  GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

  ITWAS A FRIDAY NIGHT, and Gate 14 at Norfolk International was not crowded. American Airlines Flight 405 was a scheduled hop from Norfolk, Virginia, to Miami, with continuing service to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The maybe two dozen people in the departure lounge were hardly sufficient to fill even a third of the seats of the 727 now completing fueling at the end of the jet way. The bulk of American 405’s passengers were said to be boarding in Miami for a weekend junket to the casinos and nightlife of San Juan.


  When my row was called, I lifted my carry-on, showed my boarding pass, and walked down the jet way. Through the windows, I could see thunderclouds pressing low on the horizon. It was 8:25 P.M., only ten minutes before our scheduled departure, and the last red light of day was showing in the west. As the flight attendants closed the doors and made ready for departure, I found my seat and managed to push my duffel into the overhead rack. I had definitely exceeded the recommended dimensions for carry-on luggage. Concealed in my bag was an MT-1-X military parachute.

  I wasn’t going to Miami.

  Like a dozen of my fellow passengers, I was going to jump from the airplane.

  A closer look at the people in the departure lounge might have been instructive. Most of the passengers were under thirty-five, and the men all hard-eyed and fit. Some might have noticed that the passengers had a predilection for Rolex watches and expensive running shoes. Beyond that, they hardly seemed remarkable. The passengers were no mixed bag of civilians; they included a twelve-man Navy SEAL assault team. The balance of the people on American 405 included members of the Defense Intelligence Agency, air force combat controllers, navy parachute riggers, and a handful of officers from the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Florida. All were in civilian clothes; all exhibited what the military calls “relaxed grooming standards.” In short, they blended in.

  I was as unassuming as my fellow passengers. My reddish hair was collar-length, and my face was swathed by a luxuriant Wyatt Earp mustache, something I’d grown to add some authority to my perennially freckled face. My father used to tell me that I looked like a shaggy tennis pro, or some kind of overmuscled yachtsman. I certainly didn’t look like what I was—an active-duty lieutenant in the United States Navy. Not just any lieutenant. As far as I was concerned, next to being a space-shuttle pilot, I had the best job in God’s navy. I was an assault element commander at the navy’s premier counterterrorist unit, SEAL Team Six. The other men hefting duffel bags were my shooters, my “boat crew,” as the parlance went. I was in charge of tonight’s festivities, a low-profile exfiltration and insertion exercise.

  Two hours before flight time, we packed gear and weapons in the SEAL Team Six compound and individually proceeded to the airport. We checked unmarked suitcases containing our weapons and assault gear, and were issued tickets on a flight that was never intended to reach its scheduled destination. With the complicity of the airline, we were conducting a practice run for a covert mission.

  There are a hundred ways that SEALs can insert into a target area. We can scuba dive from a submerged nuclear submarine. Boats can be dropped from airplanes in an event we call a “rubber duck.” We can patrol across glacier, jungle, or desert. We can parachute or fast-rope from helicopters. Jumping out of commercial airliners is an operation, or op, we call a “D. B. Cooper.” Using scheduled air traffic to insert into a hostile country, or a denied area, is a SEAL specialty.

  Most people do not parachute on purpose from jet aircraft. The planes are too fast, and the turbulent air dragging in their wake can snap your spine and pop your hips from your pelvis. We were trained to jump from commercial airliners because they are ubiquitous and nonattributable. It is one thing to prohibit American military aircraft from flying over your country. It is quite another to close down your airspace to all commercial traffic. Libya, Syria, Cuba, and a host of other thug nations allow commercial flights to fly through their airspace. This is all the opening a SEAL Team needs. Unknown and unseen, a SEAL element can parachute into any place on earth. One might insert: that is, provided one survives the jump. The trick is to exit in correct body position and deploy your parachute after the appropriate delay. There are two principal types of SEAL parachute operations: HALO, or high altitude, low opening; and HAHO, high altitude, high opening.

  In a HALO drop, you exit the aircraft at 35,000 feet on oxygen and open your parachute low, at 2,000 feet, to avoid detection. A jumper falling at terminal velocity, roughly 120 miles an hour, would scream in for a full three minutes before opening his parachute.

  In a HAHO drop, jumpers exit the aircraft above 35,000 feet, but their parachutes are deployed after a brief delay, maybe three seconds, opening high instead of low—sometimes literally in the jet stream. The team floats under canopy at 33,000 feet, then groups together and glides in formation toward the target.

  At six and a half miles up, the MT-1-X parachute has a thirty-knot forward airspeed, and you can cover a lot of miles before you ever see any dirt. Depending on the winds aloft, a jumper can touch down twenty or thirty miles from where he exited the aircraft. It’s a good way to drop into a place where you are neither expected nor welcome.

  We had all done both types of parachute missions, hundreds of them, and tonight’s jump was supposed to be routine. This was a practice mission. In fact, it would be my last operational act as a Navy SEAL. I settled into my row, nodding hello to a woman seated across the aisle. I had been introduced to her at a briefing earlier. She said she was a State Department employee: the usual handle, we both knew, for a CIA officer. Like the brass from the Special Operations Command, she was aboard to observe our jump.

  The plane was pushed back from the ramp, and the flight attendants pantomimed their safety briefings. Not surprisingly, nobody paid attention. American 405 was directed onto the active runway and cleared for takeoff. On the flight deck, in addition to an American Airlines captain, was a Navy SEAL, one of our operators rated as captain and pilot in command of more than a dozen types of commercial aircraft, everything from puddle jumpers to 747s and wide-bodied DC-10s. The SEAL pilot would fly the mission’s insert and jump legs.

  American 405 started her roll. As the plane climbed into the night, the pilot was advised by Norfolk ground to contact departure control on frequency 234.32. Switching to this frequency, the pilot now used the call sign Assailant 26, that of a navy aircraft. American Flight 405 had ceased to exist.

  The blip on the radar screens of departure control did not turn south for the Blue Hair State, but headed north and east over the Virginia capes. Using the navy call sign, the pilot requested and was granted a direct route to SEAL DZ, a block of restricted airspace twenty-five miles off Virginia Beach.

  As I looked out the window, Assailant 26 banked over the Cape Henry light tower. The plane shook as we flew into thickening rain clouds. I unbuckled my seat belt, stood, and turned to my leading petty officer, Alex Remero, a short, muscular Costa Rican, a demolition expert and decorated veteran of Grenada.

  “Time to get dressed,” I said.

  My assault element was composed of three Cuban-Americans, a Costa Rican, a dreadlocked Puerto Rican, and a couple of white surfer dudes like me. We were famous for blaring reggae music in the Team room, and other assault elements called us the Rastamen. It was a moniker we were proud of. The Rastas had served together for three years, in all parts of the globe, in all elements—earth, wind, ocean, and fire—and we were a band of brothers.

  As Assailant 26 rotated over SEAL DZ, we pulled our parachutes from the overhead racks. A hatch was opened on the deck of the rear galley, and Phil Fenko dropped into the luggage compartment. Like Alex, Phil was not a large man, but he was powerfully built; he had what we called a high thrust-to-weight ratio. You can forget the movies—most SEALs are not large men. I am six-three and weigh 220 pounds, considered large and slow for a Team guy. Most SEALs are around five-ten and 160 pounds. Not bodybuilders but triathletes. As Phil handed our suitcases up through the galley hatch, the parachute riggers went to work. They hooked carabiners to the deck track securing the seats and laid cables, pulleys, and come-alongs down the aisle of the aircraft to assist in opening and closing the tail ramp when jump time came.

  Military parachuting differs from civilian jumping in two ways. First, in military parachuting, an adoring girlfriend isn’t waiting for you on the drop zone—the enemy is. Second, we haul cargo. If there is a piece of equipment you think you might want on the ground, you jump with it. Although tonight’s op wa
s a training mission, we were jumping with full combat loads: weapons, ammunition, body armor, and assault gear, sixty-five pounds per jumper. During a “full mission profile,” or real-world operation, it would not be unusual for a SEAL jumper to leave the airplane with 100 or even 150 pounds of gear. Satellite radios, night-vision equipment, antitank rockets, breaching demolitions, and diving gear are a few such pieces of “optional” equipment. Tonight we wore and carried only our shooting gear. This drop was considered a “Hollywood jump,” the stuff of sissies.

  We donned our baggy, light-gray jumpsuits. Over them we strapped on inflatable UDT life jackets, pistol belts, and low-draw holsters. This gear was considered our safety equipment. It included a .40-caliber Glock model 17 pistol, four magazines, a K-bar knife, a Mark-13 flare, and an infrared strobe light. Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine pistols were strapped to our thighs. This first line of gear would be our last line of defense—if it came down to life jackets, pistols, and smoke flares, we would be in a world of hurt.

  The second line, our assault gear, was loaded into backpacks and cinched down tight. It consisted of Zainer waterproof body armor, a first-aid kit, a CamelBak water canteen, an encrypted radio, a Madonna-style headset, a ballistic helmet, an assault vest, and sixteen magazines for our MP-5s. Even on this practice mission, each man carried 480 rounds of .40-caliber Teflon-coated hollowpoint ammunition. These rounds were specially designed to pass through all known types of body armor, including our own.

  Why carry live ammunition on a peacetime jump? In the SEALs, we train like we fight. It is essential that each jumper practices with the same equipment he would use on a combat jump. Learning how to exit the airplane, deploy your parachute, and land your rig with a combat load is not something you want to practice over downtown Baghdad.